


Assassin's Creed IV: Reincarnation

by neensz



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Amnesia, Brainwashing, Desmond lives!, Fix-It, M/M, and tried to continue the series anyway, how Black Flag would have gone if Ubisoft hadn't killed off their main character, snark is love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:06:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1848937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neensz/pseuds/neensz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Desmond Miles is dead, but his story didn't end when he did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. DESMOND MILES IS DEAD

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Devera was superawesome enough to not only let me play in their sandbox, but beta this for me and make it so, so much better than it started out, so worship at the feet of the best drill sergeant editor on the Internet ;) 
> 
> This is how I think Devera's boys would have dealt with the shitshow Ubisoft gave us in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. (Seriously, go read Slight Miscalculation first. And its prequel. They're brilliant.)
> 
> Also, this is, like, super spoilery, and may not make sense if you don't know at least the plot highlights of Black Flag.

Minerva logs out of the device.

She's done her best to convince this Desmond child that following Juno's plan is a bad decision, but she's failed. She's ashamed of herself for lying by omission, but does it really matter? The self isn't the body, it's the mind. She's spent long enough trying to change the future—a future that isn't even hers. It's time to spend the few years she has left before the end of her world with her loved ones.

Well, maybe just one more session. If she can't change his mind, maybe she can leave him something to help him in the fight against Juno he's set on continuing even as he aids her.

She lets herself fall once again into the future's probable outcomes, and can't stifle a smile at the sight she's greeted with.

—-

Desmond chooses to save the world. Of course he does. He spent multiple lifetimes—through Altair, Ezio, and now Conner—practicing the same Creed the Brotherhood mostly paid lip-service to these days: "The blade is stayed from innocent flesh. Protect the innocent. Kill, die if need be, to do so."

He's protecting the entire fucking planet: That's what he wishes is his last thought, the one that will keep him strong through the blazing pain and finally follow him down into the welcome darkness.

Sure, it might be sappy or martyristic or even really egotistical, but whatever. He's sacrificing himself to save the world. He can be melodramatic if he wants to.

Plus, it's not like anyone will ever find out—no one else is going to know what his last thoughts are. He doesn't have any descendants to relive this memory through the Animus, and he won't, not if he does this.

He's alone now, except for the holograms of Minerva and Juno. The others left when he told them to. He's saving them, along with the rest of the world. He's saving Shaun.

The pain is unbelievable. His chest is being squeezed in a giant vise. The skin of his hand is burning, crackling with electricity, smelling like a Fourth of July barbecue and adhering to the sphere, and he can't move. He tries to pull away, but he's frozen. His body won't listen to him. Someone's ripping a hole in his skull and pouring acid directly on his brain. He screams, but his jaw won't open and he can't make a sound.

_Oh, god. Shaun, it hurts—I changed my mind, I don't want to go, why..._

—-

 _This job is fucked up_ , Alvin thinks as "John from IT" barks threats in his ear. He's got an overwhelming urge to track that asshole down and shove a wrist blade in his gut, just to shut him up in the most agonizing way possible—probably because he's spent too much time in the Animus being Edward today—but the view distracts him.

He's got to be, like, at least 50 storeys up, dangling in a window-washer's carriage that's probably going to break and send him plummeting to his death, but Alvin's not scared. The view strikes a chord in him. It almost seems familiar, and he finds himself wondering why it's not night. It should be night, and there should be skyscrapers lit up all around him—but he's never been this high up and totally exposed to the elements before in his life. He'd remember.

Alvin shakes the feeling off, ignoring it as much as he's ignoring the voice in his ear (And why the hell does he keep expecting it to be a chick's voice instead of John's arrogant mouthbreathing?) and focuses on jumping across the gap to Olivier's balcony. He's not scared, exactly, but falling would be... bad. Yeah, he'll go with "bad."

He follows John's insulting instructions and gets what he's supposed to from Abstergo Entertainment's Chief Creative Officer's computer—no pressure. He takes his time, careful to not make any stupid mistakes. When he finishes, he takes a couple of detours on his way down to the lobby just to piss off the asshole mouthbreathing in his ear.

It's the same courier waiting for him that had been there last time, and she's chatting with that cute coffee guy who always looks so familiar but Alvin can never place in his memory. When the courier turns to face him, rambling at him in a continuation of her conversation with the coffee guy, the weird déjà vu that had struck him on the side of the building hits him again, and it's even stronger this time. It's so disorienting that he must zone out, because all of a sudden the data transfer is done and the courier's walking off. Alvin's almost tempted to jog after her and ask her if he knows her, but she's already through the doors and standing out on the street in front of the building. Alvin gives the coffee guy a considering glance, but is put off by the way the dude is staring at him unblinkingly, eyes open disturbingly wide. The guy's eyes are really shiny, like they're watering, and the weird urge that has Alvin wanting to comfort a perfect stranger who looks like he might start crying any second makes him feel strangely compressed, like his skin is somehow too small for all his muscles and bones and organs to fit in it like they should.

Fuck it. He doesn't have time for this. His break's probably been over for half an hour now, even if Melanie was the one to pull him out of his session in the first place. Time to get back to being Edward. At least Edward's problems are all in the past and have already been resolved, nothing Alvin can do about them other than play them out, even if Alvin hasn't played them through to their conclusion yet. Plus, he wants to see if his suspicions about that James Kidd guy hold any water—the Internet didn't have anything to say about that particular Captain Kidd when he looked him up last night.

—-

As the days go by, there's blessed silence on the "John from IT" front. On Tuesday, he gets stuck in one of Edward's memories, desynching all over the place because he's got no clue what's going through Edward's head or the decisions Alvin-as-Edward should be making to keep sync, and so he starts spending more time out of the Animus.

His cubicle, with its steadily-growing collection of company-bonus dolls, is boring (and a little creepy—he always feels like they're watching him, especially the ones he's killed), so he starts spending more of his time down in the lobby.

Since he's already down there, he starts watching the coffee guy. He feels really obvious about it, especially whenever Coffee Guy catches him staring—which is a lot—but none of the other malingering employees hovering in the lobby say anything about his lame-ass creeper routine. Coffee Guy doesn't either.

Coffee Guy looks skinny, but when Alvin starts paying attention it's obvious that there are muscles under his hipster-dork sweater vests and button up dress shirts, because he lifts twenty pound bags of beans like they're feathers, and when he rolls up the sleeves of his dress shirt, his forearms are corded with muscle. Alvin notices; yeah he really does. Among other things. The broad shoulders that Coffee Guy's normally shitty posture hides but are obvious when he stretches out the kinks in his back, which Alvin only managed to see happen once—so far. And there was that time that Alvin almost killed himself, breathing coffee instead of air, when a customer dropped a handful of change, and Coffee Guy came around the front of the coffee kiosk and bent down to help pick it up—probably to make the customer go away faster—and his ass was just... Alvin has to admit that it's probably a good thing that ass is hidden in the kiosk most of the time. Unfortunately, Coffee Guy's hands, especially when he's wiping down the steamer wand, are just as distracting—and always visible.

But what keeps Alvin coming back and lurking nearby like a creeper is the way Coffee Guy casually insults pretty much everyone, Alvin included. Somehow, all the lurking in the lobby leads to Alvin buying coffee—ridiculous amounts of coffee that he doesn't even drink most of the time—just to get Coffee Guy to react to his presence. Alvin finds that the more complicated and obscure his drink order is, the more likely it is that Coffee Guy will bitch and moan and make aspersions on Alvin's character.

He utilizes this newfound knowledge often, even though it means he ends up paying through the nose for gallons shitty coffee that he pours down the bathroom sink or passes off to Melanie, because the verbal abuse from Coffee Guy is just that entertaining. And, god knows why, when Coffee Guy insults him, Alvin just can't stop smiling.

He doesn't even know Coffee Guy's name. He's been getting coffee three, four, five times a day for long enough now that he can't bring himself to admit to Coffee Guy that he doesn't actually know his name.

But Alvin keeps up his fake coffee habit, even though the longer he does it, the more likely he is to walk away feeling conflicted rather than giddy, because at the end of every rant, Coffee Guy glances up at him and all the animation just drains out of him, leaving him looking like he's fucking grieving. It hurts, seeing him in so much pain, but Alvin doesn't stop buying fancy coffees from him. Maybe Alvin's a masochist, or a sadist, but the way Coffee Guy looks before that moment, when he's all animated and casually insulting Alvin's ancestors, is worth it.

It feels like something he needs. So he doesn't stop, and it doesn't stop hurting. It actually hurts more each time, somehow, like he's starting to grieve with the guy, despite not knowing what, or who, he's grieving for.

The hacking that asshole John starts asking him to do again doesn't help.

He starts feeling like he's on a really fucked up pseudo-archaeological dig. Why the hell did Abstergo keep all this guy's personal effects, especially since he hadn't even worked for them? Why the hell did they feel the need to upload them to the fucking company servers? That damned goodbye the guy—Desmond Miles, apparently—left for his father... The audio is corrupted and staticky, but they'd uploaded a transcript, and he read it when he found it in the place John told him all the hacked stuff will go on his tablet, though fuck if he knows why he did.

He's actually starting to grieve for this guy, and he never even met him. But he's beginning to feel like he knows him now, at least a little.

"Who the fuck needs the pictures from his phone so bad that they have to..." He mutters to himself, trailing off when the next one loads, because it's that barista from the lobby. Coffee Guy. The next one is some stranger, and the one after that is the courier.

The next one—fuck. He feels like someone just yanked the floor out from under him. His breath catches in his throat. Sweat that feels strangely cold drips into his eyes, and it stings. He pulls up the hem of his shirt to dry his face and notices his hands are shaking.

"What the fuck." The photo after the one of the courier on the dead guy's phone is of him. Alvin.

He doesn't even realize he says anything out loud until John's impatient question in his earpiece snaps him back to reality. He ignores whatever the hell John is saying, wishing he could just chuck the communicator without effectively locking himself in the server room.

He leans forward over the terminal, gripping the edge of the little desk until his knuckles turn white and his hands stop trembling. He lets his head drop down between his shoulders, closing his eyes, and concentrates on taking deep, even breaths.

Why the hell did this dead guy have a picture of him on his phone? Sure, okay, the face in the photo is half in shadow because of the hoodie, but Alvin knows his own face; he sees it every fucking day in the mirror. It's him.

He needs to get out. Out of this room, this building, this company, this entire fucking situation. Something's wrong. The longer he's at this company, the deeper he gets into whatever the fuck he's getting into, the more obvious the wrongness is. He's never been wherever that picture was taken... Not that he remembers. Or does he? Alvin's brain feels like it's breaking. He wants to run down and shake Coffee Guy and the courier until they tell him what the fuck is going on.

He gets the data, heads to the lobby, sees the Coffee Guy bickering with the courier and... he just doesn't. He doesn't confront them. He can't.

He must be going nuts. Terry from the Sample 16 project did, just last month. It's a known side-effect of too much time in the Animus, even if no one really acknowledges it. _It's okay, I'm just going crazy_ , he thinks. Weirdly, it even calms him down a little. He's fucked up, for sure.

It doesn't calm him down enough to face Coffee Guy and the courier, not with what he knows he's carrying on his tablet. He panics and swerves, ducking into the lobby server terminal room before they see him. What the fuck can he do? It's not like he can hide and avoid them forever—they're expecting him.

The server terminal blinks at him. He literally just did this, he can totally do it again, even without the help of the asshole in his ear. He hacks his way back into the original folder and deletes the photo of himself. He exits out of the server interface and manages to find a browser, creating a clean, new web-based email account with no ties back to him, and emails the photo to it in case he ever needs proof of it, for whatever reason. He wipes the browser history—he can do that much on his own, thanks—and then permanently deletes the photo from his tablet as well as from the cache that will automatically transfer from his tablet to the courier's.

Alvin leaves the server room, angling himself to look like he's coming from the elevator, and heads for the _tête à tête_ at the coffee stand. He hands off the data without saying anything, not even striking up his usual banter with Coffee Guy or using it as an excuse for some more unnecessary and unwanted caffeine—it's the only time he's been in the lobby this week and not made a detour by Coffee Guy for either coffee or casual, flirty insults—and books it back up to the Sample 17 floor and his Animus, ignoring the weird looks Coffee Guy and the courier give him.

If he ignores it, it'll just go away.

Right?

—-

It doesn't go away.

He's so preoccupied with the selfie he never took on Desmond Miles' phone, along with photos of people Alvin actually knows—at least tangentially—that he can't keep synch with Edward at all. Melanie's riding his ass because Leticia's riding hers about Edward's stupid Observatory, Olivier is still missing, and then everything comes to a head when fucking _John_ tries to get him possessed by his seriously creepy electronic girlfriend, kidnaps Alvin, drugs him, and then commits suicide by security guard right in front of him.

Seriously, what is his life?

—-

He wakes up to Melanie's face hovering way too close to his. "Alvin? Alvin Draper?" she asks, like she's testing him or something.

"I'm not concussed," Alvin groans, covering his eyes with his hands, so the overhead lights will stop stabbing him in the brain. "Just feeling really fucking hungover."

Melanie relaxes, which is a weird response. Maybe she's glad he's not dead. Or a raving lunatic. Or planning to sue the company.

She sends him home, tells him to take a sick day, to take a couple even—and thank fucking god. He just cannot deal with seeing John's face in Edward's memories today, or dealing with whatever _that_ probably means.

He falls into bed and passes out.

—-

He dreams that he's Desmond Miles, that he ran away from a commune when he was sixteen, that the Templars kidnapped him, that he's a modern-day member of the Brotherhood of Assassins, that he's spent lifetimes in the Animus, that he saves the world, that he's Shaun Hasting's boyfriend.

He wakes up confused as shit.

—-

He doesn't take a sick day the next day. Well, he does—he doesn't go in to work—but he doesn't sit at home in his apartment, atrophying his brain with daytime TV either. Instead, he lurks outside the Abstergo building, waiting for Coffee Guy to finish his shift at the lobby coffee kiosk. He knows it's stupid, but he needs answers.

He spends the time he's waiting at a cafe on the nearest street corner, trying to avoid wondering if Coffee Guy's name is really Shaun Hastings, and distracting himself from thinking about what it means in regards to the rest of the dreams he had last night if his name _is_ Shaun Hastings. He plays a lot of Angry Birds, beats his high score on Flappy Bird, and even tries out the demo version of Abstergo Entertainment's latest app game (it's not very good). Then the battery on his phone dies.

He waits impatiently, ordering something whenever the servers glare at him, chewing absentmindedly on things he doesn't remember even five minutes later, while staring at the building's front doors.

Finally, Coffee Guy shows up at the doors, pausing for a second to say something to the security guard, before starting to walk away from the building. Alvin leaves money on his table and slips out of the cafe and down the street after him.

He feels like a creep, following the guy he's been hardcore flirting with via insults every day at work for the past few weeks just so he can get answers, but it's not like Alvin can just walk up and ask him. They're all constantly monitored at work—earpieces, security cameras, wiretaps... He's even pretty sure the NDA he signed when he was hired actually gives them the right to monitor his apartment. He hasn't jerked off for weeks despite never actually having found a camera anywhere, let alone in his bedroom, so he obviously can't talk to him there, or at work, or even anywhere Alvin or Coffee Guy normally go.

Maybe he's being overly paranoid about all this, but at least if he's wrong it just means that he's going crazy—it's sad that that's reassuring, but when the other option is conspiracy theories and secret organizations and ancient civilizations trying to alternately end and take over the world, he honestly prefers the crazy theory.

So it all boils down to him stalking the cute guy who works at the coffee kiosk in order to try and ambush him for answers in some out-of-the-way alley, and trying not to feel like a giant creeper while doing it. He doesn't succeed, not in either respect.

He sees Coffee Guy hurry around a blind corner, but when Alvin takes the same turn, he's faced with a brick wall twice his height.

"Where the fuck did he go?" he asks himself, but gags on the words when an arm hooks around his throat and squeezes. It's viscerally shocking how quickly he gets lightheaded, and his larynx feels like it's going to bisect his spine. He struggles in the chokehold, but can't find the leverage to free himself.

 _I can't believe I'm being mugged in an alley—I'm a fucking Assassin_ , he thinks deliriously. He feels like his head's about to float away as the color starts to fade from the wall of red bricks, its bright and vulgar graffiti, the dingy green dumpster, and the drifts of leaves and litter.

Suddenly the forearm pressing against his jugular is gone, because he's in the Animus and he's Edward, and Edward grabs the arm cutting off his air and twists his body through some complicated move Alvin's glad he doesn't have to know, and Alvin's head is pounding because he always stays in the Animus for too long, but he'll take a break when he finishes this memory. He flicks Edward's wrist to release the wrist blade, because Edward's flashy like that, and Alvin finally makes Edward look at the person he's holding against the alley wall as he pulls back his arm to punch the enemy in the throat with the knife. The enemy is glowing blue. Blue? Enemies are red. _Your allies will glow blue when you look at them this way,_ James Kidd's voice echoes in his head. Alvin hesitates, and something in Edward's peripheral vision catches his eye. There's something glowing white on his arm, through the sleeve of Edward's fancy coat. His tattoo? Edward doesn't have a tattoo like that. Alvin does. He flicks his wrist again, to sheathe the wrist blade, but there is no wrist blade.

What's happening?

"Desmond, stop!" someone yells, panic obvious in their voice. Alvin can barely hear anything.

He still has the blue person pinned to the wall. They attacked him, but they're blue—Alvin pushes away, stumbling backwards. He squeezes his eyes shut and rubs clumsy fists over them. He trips and fetches up against the opposite wall of the blind alley hard enough to make his back ache with a throb promising a spectacular bruise, but when he opens his eyes again the world's back in Technicolor.

He immediately focuses on the only other person in the alley. He knows... "Shaun?" he asks, confused, and flinches at the look on Coffee Guy's face.

"Desmond?" Coffee Guy asks, looking like someone's ripping his heart out when Alvin shakes his head in automatic rejection. Desmond Miles is dead. He saw the autopsy video. Abstergo uploaded the guy's personal effects to their fucking servers. He's not Desmond Miles, he's Alvin Draper. And he just wants answers. And maybe an explanation for why none of his memories from before his first day at Abstergo Entertainment feel completely real. But he's not Desmond Miles. Desmond Miles is dead.

"Miles is _dead_ ," he insists, out loud this time, and the blood drains abruptly from Coffee Guy's face, leaving him ghost-pale.

"Shut up," he hisses. "Shut the fuck up. Don't say that."

"I saw the autopsy video," Alvin explains quietly. He feels bad for the guy, he does, but Desmond Miles is dead. He needs to accept that. Alvin saw the proof with his own eyes.

"They never showed his face," the guy argues, gesticulating wildly. "I can prove—" he halts abruptly in the act of yanking out his wallet, which, just, why? What does Coffee Guy's breakdown have to do with _wallets_? Is this a reverse mugging now? Maybe Alvin has a concussion—actually, that would explain a lot about the past few minutes.

Coffee Guy snaps his fingers in Alvin's face and shakes his head. He still looks pissed, so Alvin jerks his wandering mind back on track. "Not here. Follow me."

Alvin starts to protest, but Coffee Guy walks away anyway, turning around at the mouth of the alley to raise a mocking eyebrow at him.

"What, it's only okay to tail me—rather ineptly, I might add—when you don't think I know you're there? Do I have to remind you again that I am, actually, an..." He trails off, the broken look on his face again when he sees Alvin's confusion. "Just... Follow me, okay?"

Alvin does.

He follows Coffee Guy down the rabbit hole. And that's saying something, considering Alvin's fucking day job is delving into and reliving the memories of a pirate from the 18th century.

—-

"Shaun Hastings! What the fuck do you think you're doing, bringing him here?" an angry voice yells out as soon as they pass through the door Coffee Guy had taken almost half an hour—in the opposite direction he'd been heading when Alvin started tailing him—to bring them to.

It takes Alvin longer than it should to recognize the angry, gothy chick by the weird couch as the courier he meets regularly in the Abstergo lobby, mostly because he's thrown by the outside confirmation of his dream's name for Coffee Guy.

In his defense, she's not wearing her courier uniform.

If Coffee Guy's name really is Shaun, does that mean the rest of Alvin's dream is true too? It can't be. He must have heard Coffee Guy's name somewhere, that's all. Plus, he's been a little obsessed with the guy for a while now—his fake coffee habit is a little bit of an in-joke on his floor, because everyone working on the Sample 17 project are incurable gossips. So maybe it's just his libido influencing his dreams. Yeah, it's gotta be that. Otherwise... no, that's crazy, it's not possible. Desmond Miles is dead. He knows it, he saw—

"Shut up, Becs. I think—" he breaks off, turning toward Alvin. "Here, I said I had proof, I can show—" he starts taking out his wallet again, but Alvin interrupts, waving him off.

"Whatever, I don't care. What I'm interested in is why I hacked into Abstergo's database to get you photos of yourselves from the dead guy's phone," he turns to include the courier in his demand.

They both pale pretty dramatically, even in the dimly-lit room (Are they seriously having a clandestine meeting in an abandoned warehouse? What kind of cheesy-ass LARP are they playing here?), though he doesn't know if it's from the question or because he called Desmond Miles "the dead guy."

The courier sighs and flaps her hand at Coffee Guy—Shaun. "You might as well show him," she says, sounding defeated. "If you're wrong we're going to have to try and kill him anyway," she mutters. Alvin doesn't think he was supposed to hear that, but weirdly, instead of scaring him it actually makes him feel... almost proud of her?

God, this is all so fucked up.

He almost laughs when Shaun verbally echoes the sentiment. Shaun glares at him and finishes yanking his wallet out of his back pocket. He pulls out one of those weird plastic wallet albums and chucks it at Alvin's head, rather than handing it to him. Alvin catches it reflexively, less than an inch from his face, and stares at his hand.

Just two months ago, right before he started at Abstergo Entertainment, he'd managed to trip over his own feet and brain himself on a table at a bar. He'd concussed himself and had to stay overnight in the hospital for observation. He's always been clumsy, and he's never been able to catch things like that. He'd remember being able to do that, he's sure of it.

Disturbed by his own quick reflexes, he covers it by mocking the wallet album, "Do people actually still use these? I mean, what do you have against technology?"

He opens the little album, and his own face stares back at him. He almost drops it.

"What the fuck?" he demands, nervous and maybe even finally a little scared. In the picture, he's got Shaun in a headlock, giving him a noogie, and it looks like they're both ecstatically happy, for all that they both appear to be yelling. He starts flipping frantically through the photos. The next one is him with his arms around the courier, Shaun and a blonde chick. Another is of him mugging for the camera, and the last is of him and Shaun kissing, obviously unaware someone's taking a picture.

"Why the fuck do you have pictures of me?" he demands angrily. "I don't remember—I never did any of this. This isn't me." He throws the album back at Shaun, shaken. Does he have a twin somewhere he never knew about? But no, the guy in the photos had his scars, his tattoo. "Did you Photoshop these? That's sick, man."

Shaun just shakes his head, and Alvin recognizes the slumped posture and dull eyes from every single time he's bought coffee from Shaun, when Shaun looked up at the end of one of his rants and realized who he was—or maybe, who he wasn't—talking to. Shaun looked like he was is suddenly remembering—over and over again—that some vital part of him had been amputated, at least if Edward's memories of peg-legged and hook-handed pirates' expression hold true.

The courier holds out her empty hands placatingly. "Look, I know this seems crazy, okay?"

That startles Alvin into laughter, and brings things into perspective. His life, for fuck's sake. Still smiling, though he doesn't know why, especially since it seems to be freaking both of them out, he explains, "Come on, you know that this isn't even the most fucked up thing that's happened to me this week."

They both look blank.

"The sage from Edward Kenway's memories is John the IT guy. He tried to download his electronic girlfriend into my head yesterday because apparently I'm destined to be her 'cipher,' whatever the fuck that is?"

The fact that he even has to jog their memories about this is insane, but then he actually looks at them, and they look astonished. And then, in weird synchronicity, they both start to look kind of like someone just gave them empirical proof that Santa Claus is not only real but also running for President, or something.

They turn to each other, for all appearances forgetting he's even there. "Do you think?" Shaun asks, terrifyingly hopeful.

"We know they lie," the courier agrees, confusingly. "And I guess being taken over by another personality is pretty much the same as brain death. Maybe the machine just wiped him, or shoved him aside?"

"But why didn't she get in right away?" Shaun asks, then answers himself before the courier has a chance, "It was all bloody ancient—maybe something shorted out?"

The courier raises her eyebrows at Shaun. "I wonder if—"

Shaun interrupts her, nodding frantically, "He must have been alive, after—"

"And if he was just a tabula rasa, then Abstergo—"

"Yeah, like with Cross, but on purpose—"

"I bet they could—"

"The Bleeding Effect—"

"Yeah, and last time, with the Black Room—"

"Do you think we could write over—"

"More like a hard reset—"

"Hey!" Alvin interrupts their talking over each other, though they seem to be sharing a brain at this point. "What the fuck is going on? What are you talking about?"

They look at each other. Shaun ignores Alvin and asks, weirdly, "Should we tell Bill?"

 _Who is Bill?_ Alvin wants to know. He also thinks _This whole day could use "weirdly" as an adjective_.

"Better wait till after, just in case," the courier tells Shaun. She turns to Alvin. "I'm sorry," she says, and Alvin ignores Shaun in retaliation for being ignored, focusing on her. "And I swear we'll explain everything after, if it doesn't work, but this will probably work better if you go into Baby without—"

He's struck by an intense feeling of foreboding, quickly scans the room. While Alvin was petulantly ignoring Shaun, Shaun had crossed the room and was now holding something up that looked like the bastard child of a Glock and a crossbow. Shaun does something and the thing he's holding makes a _thwick_ sound, and a bee stings his upper arm, and he reaches up with his other hand to grab at the insect but then his knees aren't working and he's falling and... everything goes black.

—-

"God, you two are fucking assholes," Desmond grits through his teeth as he wakes up. His second fucking non-alcohol-induced hangover in two days. He rubs at his temples with his free hand and waits for Becca to free his other hand from the Animus.

"Desmond?" Becca asks. He can't even parse her tone of voice, his head hurts so much.

"Well, I'm not the fucking tooth fairy," he groans, giving up on his temples and just covering his eyes with his free hand. Even the light just bleeding through his eyelids is making his brain feel like it's about to explode.

Suddenly, he's got a lap full of teary, laughing Becca, with no escape in sight. He yelps, and all she does is hug his head, which is weird, but also totally Becca. She scrambles off him abruptly, which is a relief until he realizes there's no one replacing her. He finally opens his eyes, but she's the only other person in the room.

"Where's Shaun?" he asks. It abruptly feels like he hasn't seen him for months, years, maybe even a lifetime if he counts all his fake memories from being Alvin. He remembers talking to him as Alvin, checking him out as Alvin, flirting with him as Alvin—but it's not the same. Desmond's sudden need to see Shaun, to fucking bear hug him until the snark comes oozing out of him, is overwhelming.

"We were taking shifts," Becca explains, twisting her hands, "but then Bill called, and he had a lead on something to do with Juno, and we couldn't exactly tell him what was going on, so Shaun didn't have an excuse not to go, and, I mean, a few hours of radio silence isn't that long, not really, so it's all probably fine, right?"

It takes Desmond a second to understand what she's saying, and then his stomach drops. "Where are they? What is he doing—is he just tech support or—no, of course not, he probably feels like he's got to prove something to— How soon can we go?"

Becca looks like someone just lifted the weight of the world off her shoulders. "That's the best thing I've heard all day. We leave now. You can rest on the way. I've got painkillers in the van if you need them. It's not that far, and I chartered a plane just in case you woke up and were you—or weren't you, for that matter. It's waiting for us on the runway."

Desmond pushes aside his worry—it won't help anyone right now. "Same old Becs," he mutters, levering himself out of the Animus, Becca's Baby, and standing quickly. The ground wavers alarmingly beneath his feet, and Becca inserts herself under his arm to keep him upright. "How long was I in there for, anyway?"

"Two days. You've probably got some damage control to do at Abstergo Entertainment," she says, hurrying him out of the room and into a nondescript van parked in the middle of the warehouse. It takes him a minute to realize what she's talking about, but then... Yeah. He's the best double agent they could ask for, considering Abstergo probably thinks they've brainwashed him so thoroughly there isn't even a chance he's not working for them. He'll have to be careful, but the Brotherhood needs him to keep that job. It makes sense.

"So, where are we going?" he asks, settling himself into the oh-so-familiar passenger seat. It's probably not the same van they had before, but all Becca's vans seem to be clones of each other, even down to the butt grooves in the seat cushions.

"New York, but first the airport. One of your fake passports is in the glove box." He looks at her. She flushes. "Shut up, Shaun's sentimental," she mutters.

"Yeah, sure, that's probably why he needs to keep my old passport in your van when he's got all those pictures of me in his wallet," he teases her, but stops abruptly when her eyes well up.

"You were— You were dead, so shut up," she accuses him, dashing the tears from her eyes angrily and turning the ignition key. "You were dead, and Abstergo had your body, and we couldn't even have a funeral, and then an old facial recognition program from the dark ages pinged your face in fucking Montreal of all places, and when we got there, you weren't even you. It was torture, seeing you not being you, and I don't know how Shaun put himself through it every day, working there."

His heart clenches. Of course. Shaun was probably punishing himself for not saving Desmond from Juno's device, even though Desmond never gave him the chance. It had been out of Shaun's control, but Shaun isn't the sort of person to ever believe that. Not many of the Brotherhood were. "Nothing is true, everything is permitted," he mutters to himself.

Becca and Desmond spend the rest of the drive to the airport in silence.

—-

The silence between them continues from the van to the puddlejumper Becca chartered, mostly out of necessity. The twin-prop plane is the loudest vehicle Desmond can remember ever riding in. Once he can hear himself think, Desmond breaks the silence to ask again, "Where are we going, exactly?"

From what he can see from the windows, they've landed in at a miniscule, one-runway county airport somewhere in the wilds of upstate New York. It appears to be completely uninhabited, barring a van—identical to the one of Becca's they'd left in Canada—sitting alone by a hanger, and the old guy driving an equally ancient-looking fuel truck toward their plane.

"The Google server farm, upstate," Becca replies, to Desmond's surprise.

"Google? I thought their actual company motto was 'Don't be evil'?"

Becca shoots a sidelong glance at him. "How do you even know that?" 

Desmond shrugs. Shaun had told him. He'd chortled and said that someone in the organization at one point had to have been an Assassin, and that the company motto was a subtle jab at the Templars.

"Never mind," Becca continues with a sigh. "Juno apparently uploaded a part of herself to their server farm, and Shaun's breaking in and releasing a virus to delete that part of her. It's basically what we've been doing since she found the Internet."

"That probably explains why she was so incoherent when she was talking to me," Desmond muses. "But if it's just a server farm—for fucking Google—then why can't he just walk in?"

Becca scoffs. "Are you kidding me? Google security is the shit—it's probably actually better than Abstergo's." Desmond raises his eyebrows at her, but she stands firm. Well, actually, she grabs his arm and pulls him across the—terrifyingly full of potholes—tarmac to her clone van and pushes him into the passenger seat. "Come on, come on, we have to go. Still haven't heard anything from Shaun." She runs around and jumps into the driver's seat, starting the ignition and peeling away from the runway.

"Plus, aren't all their server farms in farm country?" Desmond asks, accepting that she knows where they're going, but he's still confused.

"Like I said, tight security. Only eight server farm locations have been released to the public, but Shaun's found evidence of a total of at least fifteen. Honestly, Desmond, do you really care?" she finishes, beginning to sound exasperated.

"Not really," he admits easily.

He watches her roll her eyes and grins at the familiarity of it. Sure, part of him is freaking out—Shaun might be in danger, and Desmond and Becca might not get there in time to help—but at least he has this back. He hadn't known how much he was missing until he got it all back, just a few short hours ago.

"So, what have you got for me? Like, if Google's not evil—if Juno's really just using them without their knowledge—I don't really want to go around killing innocent security guards."

Becca grins, and is almost her old self for a moment. "I missed this," she remarks, randomly, before continuing. "You've got smoke bombs and a tranq gun in the bag in the back; extra darts in the side pocket." Desmond twists around and grabs the messenger bag from the back, which is sitting on top of one of his many old white hoodies.

"Seriously?" he asks, grabbing the hoodie and almost choking up. How many times had they had to drop everything and run between him "dying" and now? And exactly how much of his stuff had they managed to keep while on the run from Abstergo, the authorities, and the terrifying alien who was now living in the Internet? He distracts himself from the surge of emotions by pulling on the hoodie and internally debating whether he needs to tease her forever, or just for half of forever.

Becca side-eyes him and mutters, "I told you to shut up about it."

A few minutes later, she pulls over on the side of the road, next to absolutely nothing. "It's about two miles through the woods that way." She points north, and hands him a comm unit and a GPS tracker. "This will show you where Shaun is." She hesitates for a moment, then thrusts something else at him. Desmond quickly shoves the comm unit in his ear to free up a hand and takes it. It's a pair of gauntlets for the wrist blades. "I know they're not yours, Abstergo has them and we can't get them back without tipping them off, but I made these and they're totally better than the old ones. You've got Yusef's hookblade on the left one, and the right one spins like Connor's did, if just you hit this when you flick your wrist to release the blade," she grabs it to demonstrate, then shoves it back at him.

Desmond jams the tracker in his hoodie pocket and quickly straps on the gauntlets. Something settles in him, and he finally feels real, like they are the last part of him that his mind has been missing. He pulls Becca into a quick, hard hug.

"They're perfect, Becs, thanks," he mutters, immediately releasing her, jumping out of the van and taking off north into the woods, running toward Shaun as fast as his legs—and arms, as he swings from branch to branch over a ravine—will carry him.


	2. DESMOND AND SHAUN FINALLY REUNITE, AND CELEBRATE BY BLOWING SHIT UP

Shaun curses mentally, contorted into an awkward position in the barely-there gap between a server tower and a wall as a security guard sweeps the room. This is the last bloody time he's relying on someone else's intel—it always goes poorly for him. Always.

He checks the pocket he stashed the flash drive in, patting it to make sure it's still there. Sure it's a single flash drive—but it, and all the others like it, are what will spell Juno's end. If only he can get it to the proper fucking servers and plug it in, then he'll finally be able to get out of this bloody technological utopia. Knowing Juno's lurking somewhere in the server banks is making the skin on the back of his neck crawl.

His comm crackles with static, and Shaun quickly turns the volume down again. He doesn't know what's wrong with the piece of shite, but it hasn't given him anything but static since he reached the part of the compound where the servers are housed. _Probably yet another thing to blame on Juno_ , he thinks irritably.

The security guard turns toward him and Shaun freezes, but it's just a final glance before the man leaves the area.

Shaun begins to ease his way out of hiding, but a faint sound from above sends him back down into cover. He looks up, and sees a bloody fucking hallucination monkey-barring its way across the ceiling, using the water and service pipes as handholds.

It's wearing Desmond's old hoodie, and has a dark pack slung across its back, just like the one Shaun is using. Could it— No. Best not get his hopes up. Alvin had seemed like a fairly decent bloke, so after the rewrite of his brain failed, Becs probably recruited him. Getting Des back in time to give Shaun a hand would be too much like good luck for it to happen to Shaun.

Or maybe it is just a hallucination, brought on by too much stress and those execrable microwave burritos Bill lives on. The hallucination stops, swinging easily from one arm and fishing something out of a pocket. Des always used to do that, and it drove Shaun bloody nuts. Why, oh why, would you hang from one arm, putting all that torsion on the shoulder joint and opening yourself up to premature arthritis, when you can just save your joints and find a perch before whatever it is you need so urgently to do with the one hand? _Some one-handed activities are pretty fucking urgent_ , he imagines Des would answer with a leer. _And it tones the guns like crazy._

The... person... stares at whatever is in his hand, and then looks straight down at Shaun.

It's Desmond's face, but is it Desmond? He could be a Templar plant. Another one. Even Abstergo has to have realized by now that their first one's no longer active.

What can he do if it is a Templar operative? Shaun doesn't know if he can kill someone wearing Desmond's face, even if it's Juno herself.

That's a terrifying thought.

What if putting Alvin in the Animus had opened up a path for Juno to exploit? Shaun doesn't know how it would work, but Juno's a canny bitch. Alvin had told them himself that Juno had said Alvin was her "cipher," and that the sage had tried to put her in Alvin's head.

Bloody buggering fuck. What's Shaun to do if it's Juno? He can't just give up and go softly into the good night and bloody reign of Juno's world domination. He'll have to try and kill the thing wearing Des' face. He's an Assassin. It's his duty. He can always join Des in oblivion after Shaun accomplishes his mission.

 _He'd kill me himself if he knew thoughts like that are what're keeping me going,_ Shaun reminds himself. As always, it does little to dispel his depression.

He forces himself to focus on the world around him.

The question of who exactly is wearing Desmond's face will apparently be answered soon: As Shaun watches, the man flips down to the floor, landing softly for all it must have been a 50-foot drop. The man glances around quickly, then arrows straight for Shaun.

Shaun braces himself for impact, and surreptitiously fingers the catch on the wrist blades he rarely wears. _That just means they're sharper,_ he reassures himself half-heartedly. He still doesn't know if he can do it. He must, but he doesn't know if he can.

The man is there, yanking Shaun out of his contortionist's hiding place and grabbing him up in one of Desmond's signature crushing hugs.

Shaun wraps his arms around Des and doesn't spare a thought for his wrist blades. He can't do it. If it's not Des, he's just taken a piss on the world, but he doesn't care. Shaun isn't a good person, but he's alright with that.

Des squeezes him just right. It's him. It must be, or Shaun's fucked over the planet, so he can't believe otherwise.

They don't exactly have time for this right now, not if they're going to attempt to complete the mission, and Shaun knows it. It's hard to make himself care, but he's a professional.

 _A professional "something," all right,_ he can just imagine Des saying.

Regardless, the next guard will be passing through the area in less than five minutes, from what Shaun's observed over the last few hours he's spent here. Something had prompted them to upgrade their security between Shaun's taking the job and his arrival in the area.

He finds that hard to remember with Des wrapped around him for the first time in forever, but then Desmond's lips brush Shaun's neck in that place Des always kisses, that he can't seem to ever get enough of, and Shaun knows for sure who it is he's got in his arms.

After waiting so long without hope, and then forcing himself through the crushing agony of tearing his heart out anew every day while undercover at Abstergo, watching a stranger wearing Desmond's face and responding to a stranger flirting with Shaun using Desmond's voice, Des has finally come back to him. It's almost enough to make Shaun believe in a higher power, but he'd rather just believe in Desmond.

Desmond apparently also knows the crunch they're in, unfortunately, because he releases Shaun far too soon.

"Security cameras?" Des asks, glancing around and seemingly one hundred percent in the moment and on the job. The change in demeanour almost gives Shaun whiplash, but it's one of many quirks of Desmond's that Shaun has gotten used to over time.

"I looped them again an hour ago, but I don't know how long it'll last. Something's got the minions spooked," Shaun replies, glancing at his watch. Two minutes until the next patrol comes by. "The servers we need are two banks south and fifteen banks west."

"God, that's gotta be, like, at least two miles," Desmond mutters.

"Yes, praise the gods of the Internet, the hoi polloi can't go two minutes without their YouTube fixes," Shaun shoots back.

"Fuck, I missed you," Desmond says under his breath, grinning crazily as he eyes the distance to where they need to be. "Is there a reason we can't just, like, bomb the shit out of this place?" he asks hopefully. Shaun wishes Des had more of a tell when he's trolling people, but the man is a consummate actor.

"Well, there's the innocent minions here," Shaun replies quietly, hiding his own crazed grin by starting off down the aisle between server banks. "And also, I don't know, the fact we'd be branded international terrorists and hunted to our deaths for upping the buffering time on the mass's quality cat videos?"

Desmond tugs him to a stop, and gestures to the top of the servers. "Be quicker up there."

Shaun rolls his eyes. "Yes, if we want everyone in a five mile radius to know where we are."

Desmond grins, "You didn't notice me, did you?"

Oh. He meant up there, up there. Shaun swallows. It's not that he's afraid of heights, it's just that he's never really been fond of the Brotherhood's tendency to fling themselves off tall things and hope for a convenient haystack at the bottom. He's sure there's millions of bloodlines that have been lost to time, thanks to an Assassin's leap of faith onto an inconveniently-placed pitchfork. But time is most definitely of the essence, here. "I'll follow your lead, then."

Desmond clasps his shoulder briefly, probably in encouragement, and takes off. Shaun follows suit a few seconds later. Running silently to the closest upthrust of pipes and cables, they climb quickly.

The crawling on the back of Shaun's neck intensifies, but he concentrates on climbing and not looking around. If there's a guard with a gun trained on him, there's nothing Shaun can do to save himself right now except fall. Which wouldn't really help him in the long run.

They hang, finally, over the server banks Shaun needs. He can definitely feel the burn in his shoulders and hands, but his muscles haven't given up on him yet, and don't feel like they will any time soon. "Do you need to do this quick, or quick and quiet?" Des asks him softly. "I've got smoke grenades and a tranq gun if you need them."

"Thanks, but no. Unfortunately, the goal is for no one to notice anything, not even down the line. It's gotta be sneaky in and sneaky out," Shaun sighs quietly. "This would all be much easier if we could go with the 'shock and awe' tactics you and your military love so well."

"They're not _my_ military," Des argues back absentmindedly, staring down at the servers they need.

Shaun scans the ground and sees a security guard turning out of the area. "Now's our chance," he urges Des. Des drops to the floor. Shaun sends a quick prayer up to—no one, really—and follows. He doesn't break anything, or die ingloriously by pitchfork. It's a good landing.

Shaun scrambles to open the server's casing, swearing under his breath as he picks the lock. Success! He counts down from the top and slides out the server he needs, plugging the USB drive into the appropriate port. He taps his foot as he watches his watch count down 23 seconds—the program only needs 20 seconds to run, but he didn't write it so he's allowing a margin for error—and pulls the drive free. He slides the server tray back into the casing, shuts the door and relocks it.

"Is that it? Really?" Desmond asks disbelievingly.

"Not hardly," Shaun scoffs. He glances at his watch, and then down the aisle. Still empty. "We have to do that seven more times, in different locations, within this same facility."

Desmond blinks at him, and smiles slowly. "How many did you do before I got here?"

"Twelve," Shaun sighs. He's ready to be done with this night. More than ready.

—-

It's not until they're almost back at the van that Shaun allows himself to really believe that this is actually Desmond, his Des, back from the dead—or near enough, at any rate—and that he's here to stay. It's right around the same time that Des tackles him from the side, dragging him down into the loam of the forest floor. Before Shaun can do anything—defend himself from this unexpected attack, pretend he hadn't yelped like a ninny—Des is kissing him. He's making those helpless sounds that first got his hooks into Shaun, and Shaun can't resist kissing him back.

The hard line of heat against his hip makes him grind his own hard-on against Desmond for a second—and then he realizes that they're in sight of the van with a sharp shock that's almost exactly like a bucket of cold water.

He can see the van. The van can see them. Well, no, the van can't see them, but whoever's in the van probably can. And he and Des are mauling each other on the forest floor not fifteen yards away. He pushes Des off him, steeling himself against the whine he knows that will bring.

There's no whine—Des just doesn't go. He stays plastered against Shaun, shaking a little, until, "Bloody hell, are you crying?" Shaun asks, terrified. "You're the wanker who died! What do you have to cry about?" he asks, possibly a tad harshly. It's not unjustified, though. Desmond _was_ the one who died—the rest of them were the ones who had to soldier on after that little bright point in their lives.

Desmond coughs wetly, still hiding his face in Shaun's shoulder. No—no. He's wiping his face on the fabric of Shaun's jumper, the tosser.

"Shut up, asshole." Des clears his throat. "I'm gonna remember this when you start sobbing on my shoulder tonight, clutching me to your heaving bosom as you declare your undying love for me."

Shaun punches him in the side and rolls away, even though he's got what feels like a supernova living in his chest. "Yeah, well, is that going to be before or after you come out to your dad?" Because there is now another van parked beside the first, this one the darker-gray clone Shaun and Bill had used for the mission, and Bill is already halfway between them and the vans, Becs on his heels.

The confrontation is short and decidedly more not sweet, with Bill much more concerned that they'd let another Templar spy into their midst than rejoicing over his son's return or reacting to his—as far as Bill knew—newfound sexuality, the cold bastard.

Shaun and Desmond had never exactly hidden in the closet, but they hadn't flaunted their relationship either, which meant that none of the understandably-preoccupied Assassins in their cell had ever noticed—except, well, Becs. After they manage to convince Bill not to stab Desmond in the throat, she hits them and laughs, then hits them again and swears at them. Shaun takes it all to mean that she's happy for them, in her own strange way. Though she might just be happy that they'd completed the mission without dying, as she'd already known of his and Desmond's relationship. She was the one who had one day—before Juno killed Lucy, before they found Juno's cave, before Des died—slipped him, with a wink and complete silence on the topic afterward, the photo he has in his wallet of him and Des kissing.

—-

The journey back to Montreal is uneventful, as far as Shaun knows. He spends most of the trip dozing next to Desmond, firmly caught by the arm around his waist and the unconscious head resting on his shoulder, with brief moments of somnambulance as he guides Desmond from van to plane to van again. The mission has been hard on Desmond, forcing him to use muscles and abilities he probably hasn't exercised in months outside of his Animus at Abstergo Entertainment. Becs had mentioned, when Desmond first fell into unconsciousness on top of Shaun in the van, that they'd headed out as soon as Desmond had crawled out of the Animus, and that he hadn't even napped on the way to New York—so, basically, the idiot hadn't slept for three days.

No matter how much Desmond had argued for Animus time counting toward his chronic sleep deficit in the past, the Animus didn't allow the REM stage and so therefore didn't count, in Shaun's—and the scientific community's, and everyone but Desmond's and Bill's—opinion.

When they arrive back at the warehouse, minus Bill who took off to report back to his own cell of Assassins before the rest of them had even left the vicinity of the Google server farm, Becs—the traitor—pipes up to point out that Desmond can't stay the night.

Shaun disagrees. Vehemently.

"I'm on sick leave," Desmond chimes in on Shaun's side. "I don't have to be anywhere."

"You were on sick leave," Becs agrees. "Don't you think they'll find it suspicious that you disappeared off the face of the earth while you were supposed to be sick? You've got to know that they're monitoring your place."

"It wasn't real sick leave," Desmond defends himself. "Melanie told me—Alvin?—me to take a few days to get over the whole thing that happened with John."

"About that," Shaun says slowly, distracted from his own argument for a sleepover with Desmond. "You said before—," he gestures wildly, trying to encompass everything that had happened in the past three days, "before, that he tried to download Juno into your head?"

"Yeah," Desmond agrees, cautiously.

"So there's probably a part of Juno hiding on the Abstergo servers?" Becs gets what he's driving at.

"Most likely," Shaun agrees. He deflates and runs a hand through his hair, ruining the styling product and not caring. "And you're going to be our in for that, so we definitely can't sabotage your job there yet, as much as I hate to admit it."

"Plus, I'm an excellent double agent where I am," Desmond agrees reluctantly. "I'll probably have to keep working there until we bring the whole company down, huh?"

"Or until they catch you, whichever comes first," Shaun says, faking cheer.

Becs rolls her eyes. "Right. So, as fun as this is, you need to get going. I'll be waiting in the van, Desmond—I'll drop you somewhere you can walk home from that isn't near here." She heads out to the main part of the warehouse, before pausing and giving them a sly smile. "Don't take too long saying goodbye. You'll see each other at work tomorrow, after all."

"Fuck, your job!" Desmond suddenly exclaims.

"Unlike you, I had the leisure to take time off before I disappeared off the face of the planet," Shaun says absentmindedly, already pulling him close. "Now give me a proper goodbye. You're going off over enemy lines tomorrow, after all."

"So are you," Desmond says breathlessly, some time later.

Shaun's reply, and he forgets whatever it is supposed to be, is interrupted by the beep of the van's horn. "Go on, now, she's getting antsy," he murmurs, resting his forehead on Desmond's shoulder. "Don't worry, I'll have a surprise for you at work tomorrow," he says, louder, and gives Desmond a shove to get him moving toward the van.

"What, like, actual decent coffee?" Desmond asks, laughing and walking backwards.

"Blasphemer!" Shaun cries. "You know bloody well there isn't any such thing. No, you'll have to just wait and see."

Desmond gives a final wave and disappears into the side of the van.

Shaun most decidedly does not feel torn, or anguished, or like he's just had some vital part of him that he needs for his continued existence brutally ripped away, because Shaun is not the heroine in a romance novel. He's not.

He sighs and checks his watch, slumping. Eleven hours, twelve minutes and counting until he can see Desmond again.

—-

Shaun's clever surprise is a date. He asks Desmond out, loudly and publicly, when Desmond swings by the coffee kiosk on his way up to the Sample 17 floor to delve into his own genetic memories, once removed. Shaun realizes that that's another thing they should start doing in Desmond's downtime, sending him through Edward's lifeline at an accelerated pace, so they're one step ahead of all the knowledge Abstergo will get. He makes a note of it for later, because he's busy now.

"C'mon, you'll like it, promise," he fake-wheedles, attempting to persuade Desmond into agreeing to something they've already been doing for ages, though who knows what it looks like from the outside.

Desmond says yes; of course he does. Shaun hopes he realizes that it's really a cover for an important date with Becs and the Animus as well as with Shaun, because he doesn't want to have to be the one explaining and facing down those puppy-dog eyes if Desmond doesn't figure it out from himself.

Yes, Shaun would very much like to take Desmond out on a proper date. Well, if that proper date involved a bed, and breakfast in said bed twelve hours later, but "fate of the world," and all that. Maybe once they finish off Juno for good, Shaun will take Desmond out to the movies to celebrate. Movies showing in a movie theater on a deserted island filled with beds.

It's been a long dry spell for Shaun, since Desmond died. He hadn't even wanted to have a go with anyone else. But now Desmond's back and it's torment, especially with the way he's filling out those jeans and that Henley today.

"So how about six?" Desmond says, possibly for the second time, smiling at him.

Shaun pulls himself away from that deserted island filled with beds, and agrees. They arrange to meet in the lobby and do dinner first, before seeing a movie, one they'll pick during dinner. Shaun figures that way, they can lose any tails they might have between the restaurant and the "theater," and he'll be able to make sure Desmond has some real food in his stomach before going back into Becs' Animus. He's seen "Alvin's" credit card statements—the man lives on nothing but Pop-Tarts, Hot Pockets, and ramen. He's going to die of scurvy soon—ironic, considering the ancestor whose life Desmond is currently reliving.

But then, any way Shaun has to keep Desmond around a little longer, he'll take.

Shaun staves off boredom for the rest of the day by substituting whole milk for skim in all his customers' skinny lattes and mochas. It's probably a good thing he's never actually considered being a barista as a career, because his coffee's generally so shitty that they never even notice. Hilariously, they keep coming back for more. It entertains him until six on the dot, when he tosses the towel draped over his shoulder at his relief's face (it's a 24-hour coffee kiosk, which just proves to him that Canada's nothing more than Yank-Lite, honestly).

He waits impatiently on the footbridge over the indoor pond by the elevator, fidgeting as his watch ticks one minute past, then two, worrying that someone in Abstergo's infrastructure has noticed the change in "Alvin," that Desmond's been caught, killed, is being tortured—

The elevator dings, and Desmond steps out, grinning at him. "Melanie wanted to chat about the new trailer, but I blew her off. Sorry I'm late," he says, leaning into Shaun to awkwardly peck at his cheek. It's so awkward, Shaun almost feels sorry for him. However, they are supposed to be new at this, so he lets that excuse his flush. He's a bloody great actor, is all.

"So, I was thinking Byla Byla for dinner, sound good?" Desmond asks, slipping his arm through Shaun's and then practically dragging him across and out of the lobby. "I've been craving Mediterranean food all day."

"Sounds brilliant," Shaun agrees, following Desmond's lead, rather than struggling free and making it appear to everyone around them that he doesn't actually want to be dating this asshole. Most people won't get his and Desmond's dynamic, he's fairly certain. That is why he lets Desmond keep his arm tucked through Shaun's. It is.

"It's fairly close, isn't it?" Shaun asks, for the security guards' sake.

"Yeah, we can walk from here." Desmond takes a right turn out of the front doors and marches off down the street confidently, tugging Shaun along in his wake.

"Map it during your break, did you?" Shaun asks, smirking.

"Maybe," Desmond concedes, but doesn't slow down for a while. "How long before I can fucking kiss you?" he hisses under his breath, tugging them off the sidewalk and behind some greenery. "Are they following, or do you think they're going to meet us there?"

"Bugger me," Shaun replies with a shrug, and waves off Desmond's heated look. "I'm not that kind of girl," he simpers, adding in the same tone, "they're definitely following. Two people paused when you oh-so-subtly dragged us behind this not-very-concealing shrub," he gestures at the plant that might one day be a tree, if it eats its vegetables.

"Might as well make it worth our while then," Desmond shrugs, then leans forward and snogs the crap out of Shaun.

Shaun fends him off again for the sake of their watchers, as much as he doesn't want to, protesting that he's hungry. They eventually arrive at the restaurant, eat, and slip out through the bathroom window after leaving some cash on the table. Shaun's glad he doesn't have to explain the situation to Desmond, but then again, Desmond's an Assassin. Probably the member of the Brotherhood with the most comprehensive training program to boot, thanks to all the time he's spent in the Animus.

Shaun leads him across the rooftops toward the warehouse, revelling in the momentary freedom and the shadow by his side. For a moment, he almost feels like a superhero—a proper one. Then they arrive at the warehouse, greet Becs, and Desmond slides back into Becs' Baby, complaining like always, and it's like he never left them at all.

—-

Days pass, and Shaun can see the double life wearing on Desmond. Desmond adopts the Uberman sleep schedule unintentionally, for fuck's sake, coming out the other side of sleep-deprivation insanity with the ability to function on only a 20-minute nap every four hours.

But they're making progress.

Desmond slows down his journey through Edward's memories at Abstergo Entertainment, and tells Shaun that whenever anyone at work gives him shit about it, he cites PTSD from his kidnapping by the IT guy until they excuse him and back off. Desmond's laughing about PTSD and using it as an excuse, but Shaun wonders if there might be a grain of truth to it. After all, with all the time Desmond's spent in the Animus, he's probably seen more action than most of the patients in the VA combined.

Regardless, it gives the Assassins a chance to get ahead of Abstergo in the search for Edward's Observatory, and then for the missing vials of First Civilization DNA.

When the day comes that Desmond can't keep the Observatory from Abstergo anymore, he panics. Shaun has to talk him down from quitting the job, though he also has his concerns. Abstergo has the sage's body, so no doubt has enough of his DNA to keep the door open to the place for centuries.

He reminds Desmond, and himself, that the Assassin presence on the island bolstering the guardians will give them time. Time for what, though, he doesn't know. No one does.

—-

Becs is asleep, and it's Shaun's turn to watch Desmond and the Animus tonight. The two of them have been getting more sleep than Desmond, at least. There's a familiar beep signalling the end of the session, and Shaun turns toward the couch.

"That's it, then," Desmond says, sliding out of the Animus, his face gray. Shaun quickly pushes him back down onto the bench, and makes Desmond put his head between his knees until his color improves. "Edward's conceived Haytham, so we'll never know if he found the vials," he says, muffled but still audible.

Shaun swears, but starts rubbing the base of Desmond's skull anyway. Not his fault, as much as Shaun would like someone to blame.

"Well, at least it means we won't be giving them a bloody map to the things," he says, making a face at the strangeness of hearing a "chin up, look on the bright side" coming out of his own mouth. True, though. They can relax, at least a little. Abstergo's only had knowledge of where the Observatory is for a few days, and hasn't made any moves in that direction yet.

"What do you think, blow it up?" Shaun asks, not really thinking about what he's saying.

Desmond looks up at him, eyes brighter than they've been the last few days. "Do you think we can convince the rest of the Brotherhood?"

"Do we have to? I suppose we do," Shaun says, thinking of the guardians and Assassins camped out in the jungle around the place. Wouldn't do to decimate their own numbers, after all.

"Maybe if we took out the skull first?" Desmond asks. "I can probably get in the way Edward got out that one time. It'll be a bitch to climb up out of the water, but I bet it's possible."

"And if it's not, you'll get hypothermia and drown before admitting it," Becs agrees. "It's a good thing you have a keeper."

Shaun looks over to where she's stumbling toward them, rubbing red eyes.

"Couldn't sleep," she explains.

Desmond doesn't deny the "keeper" accusation. Shaun's smug about it, until he realizes that means he's the one who has to keep Desmond from leaping onto clandestine pitchforks. "Buggering fuck."

"Yes please," Desmond says with a straight face.

"Later, dear. You have a headache," Shaun replies, equally deadpan.

Becs rolls her eyes and waves them away. "Leave now, please, before I get diabetes," she mutters. They don't move. "Seriously, though, it's the weekend. Please go get it out of your systems before we leave for the Caribbean," she pleads. It doesn't take much more urging than that.

—-

They fall into Desmond's bed, already half naked. Because of their weird un-sham, Abstergo knows they're dating, so—as long as they keep from talking about the Animus, or the Brotherhood, or the Templars in bed, which isn't difficult—fucking in Desmond's apartment can only help them. Plus, it means Shaun can hack the surveillance cameras' buffer later for some quality viewing.

Despite this free pass, they've rarely had time for anything more than their sham-dates lately with the schedule Desmond's been keeping. They haven't actually done more than quick hand jobs and blowies since Desmond came back to himself, so Shaun's not surprised when Desmond goes straight for the nightstand and pretty much flings the lube at Shaun's head.

"Condoms," Shaun reminds Desmond, thinking of the cameras and the eyes behind them, and suddenly has to wonder if they have sound. He leans forward for a kiss, and whispers directly into Desmond's ear, "Don't let me call you by name."

"I answer to God as well as Alvin," Desmond replies, loud enough for the neighbors to hear, if they're home.

Shaun chokes on a laugh. "Tosser," he mutters, putting on the condom before shouldering Desmond's legs, slicking up his fingers and sliding them home. Desmond keens, arching his back, and okay, maybe starting with two was a bit much after going so long without. He gentles his touch and strokes over Desmond's prostate in apology until the whimpers coming from him are easier, almost mindless, and then eases in a third finger.

"C'mon, you fucker," Desmond threatens.

"Going to break my fingers if I don't?" Shaun teases.

"Maybe," he gasps, arching again as Shaun pegs his prostrate.

Shaun eases his fingers out and wipes the remaining slick on his cock, gripping Desmond's hips and sliding in. "Fuck, you're tight," he breathes, his awareness centered on the slick heat around him.

"Been awhile," Desmond agrees, moving against him.

They find a rhythm quickly, and to their mutual consternation, end even quicker.

"Practice makes perfect," Desmond grumbles into the pillows after Shaun gets back from the bathroom. This long, and the bastard's still a useless lump after getting buggered, every time.

"You asking me to stick around for breakfast?" Shaun asks, sliding under the covers like it's a foregone conclusion—which it is.

Desmond murmurs agreement, already mostly asleep, and wraps his octopus arms around Shaun. Shaun relaxes against Desmond—he's been missing this for a long time—and just barely remembers to kick off the duvet before he falls asleep. Desmond's actually a space heater cleverly disguised as an Assassin.

—-

They blow up the Observatory.

It's brilliant.

They don't give the skull to Bill, because it feels like that would come back to bite them in the ass. After discussing it with Becs, they conclude that nowhere is safe, and decide to keep it safe with them. Becs hides it in the Animus couch, and they all just pretend it isn't there. They also pretend that it doesn't sometimes feel like it's watching them. Shaun's pretty sure that's just paranoia.


	3. TAKING DOWN ABSTERGO FROM WITHIN

Desmond goes back to work at Abstergo. He finishes out Edward's memories for them, but when whoever they sent to the Observatory finds only a fresh pile of rubble, he starts noticing more eyes on him. He's more careful about where he goes, and stops taking as much advantage of the permissions the late and unlamented John had forgotten to take away from "Alvin" before committing suicide.

None of this seems to help.

On a Friday a few weeks after the most satisfying explosion he's been a part of, he pulls himself out of the Animus—Leticia and Melanie been asking for more detail for the naval battles for the "immersive experience attraction" they're building in Vegas—to find Melanie in his cubicle, just watching him.

He suppresses a shiver. He hates that he's so defenseless when he's under, especially with no one here to watch his back. But Melanie just nods at him, and then walks off.

—-

"What ever happened to Olivier?" he asks Shaun over Chinese takeout Friday night. They're eating at the warehouse, babysitting the Animus and its hidden, creepy treasure while Becca is out on a supply run (or a night on the town, Desmond didn't ask).

"Oh, bloody hell, did we never tell you?" Shaun sits up straight. "He's one of us. He's out looking for those First Civilization vials now."

"Then why did you need me—Alvin—to get you his itinerary for the shareholders meeting that time?" Desmond wants to know. It's not that he doesn't trust Shaun—it's the rest of the modern-day Brotherhood he's not sure of sometimes.

"He needed help getting out from under his Templar guards," Shaun explains. "Abstergo had gotten wind of something, and tripled his security. We think that they at least thought it was a threat from outside, as opposed to him slipping away."

Desmond discovers he can still eat an entire spring roll in one bite, and chews thoughtfully. "Maybe it's time for him to come back," he says through his food. Shaun glares at him, and wipes crumbs from his sweater. Desmond makes a face at him and swallows. "But seriously, I think Melanie's on to something, but I don't know what, or how she feels about it." He'd woken up to her in his cubicle, just looking at him, two more times that day. Each time she'd just given him a nod and left. He'd started to get the feeling that she was watching out for him, rather than watching him, but he didn't know whether to trust that instinct or not.

"And you think with Olivier back, she'd have someone to talk to and we'd know where she stood," Shaun muses while Desmond shovels some Lo Mein in his mouth.

Desmond nods, and actually swallows this time before speaking. "Yeah. I mean, with both her and Olivier on our side, we might be able to swing that whole arm of Abstergo over to us. Can you imagine?"

"Templars marketing the subversive Brotherhood agenda," Shaun grins. "I can imagine it. I'll bring it up with Olivier and Bill and try to convince them."

"You can add that it'd give me the freedom to go home for a visit," Desmond adds slyly. "Dad can't deny Mom anything, and if you make sure she knows before Dad nixes it, it might help."

"You just want to watch me on the phone with your mother again," Shaun accuses him.

Desmond shrugs. "Also, I died after not seeing her for nine years, and I kinda want the excuse." He knows it's a low blow, but it's also the truth. Shaun folds, just like Desmond knew he would. He's pretty sure that secretly, Shaun loves Desmond's mother. It's just very, very secretly. It's not so far-fetched, considering that that's pretty much how Shaun shows his affection for Desmond, and Desmond knows without a doubt that Shaun loves him.

—-

Shaun makes the call on Saturday. Desmond watches, and it's hilarious.

Desmond's mom is kind of like how he'd imagine a modern-day Altair, if one that's more in touch with his feelings, and also a woman. She's extremely blunt and straight-forward, and kind of bludgeons you with affection until you just give in and accept that you don't have a choice in her feelings for or about you. And she always gets her way. She was one of the reasons he ran, frankly, but he's begun to find that he also kind of misses her a lot.

Shaun hangs up, and chucks the phone at Desmond. They're in Shaun's bolt-hole, since this is nothing they want Abstergo hearing, so it's fairly shabby, and everything is at least second-hand if not fifth, but the couch is comfortable and the bed is sinful and Desmond actually gets to hear Shaun call out Desmond's name instead of Alvin's.

"Gah," Shaun moans, sinking dramatically into the couch. "That woman."

"But it's done?" Desmond asks, tugging Shaun against his side and ignoring his perfunctory struggles.

"Done and done. Bill will doubtless be calling to curse us out sometime soon, but your mother promises that Olivier will be back at Abstergo by the end of the week." Shaun deflates against Desmond's side, digging the sharp corner of his glasses into Desmond's shoulder. Desmond ignores the annoyance.

"I guess we just hope Melanie turns out to be on our side now, and that she doesn't murder me in my Animus?" Desmond asks.

"Yeah, maybe don't spend as much time under this week," Shaun agrees. "Don't you have paperwork you could do?"

"I'm sure I can find something."

—-

Desmond tries to spend as little time in the Animus as he can manage that week, but it seems like every time he comes out of it, Melanie is there. She starts striking up conversations with him, pulling him into her office and asking what he thinks about the latest direction they're going with the Vegas Pirates experience. He starts to wonder if maybe she's hoping for a contract with Disney or something.

On Friday, that all stops, because Olivier's back.

Desmond doesn't know how the Brotherhood made it happen, but Olivier's back in his office with very little fuss, and no one even seems suspicious. From the little he heard from Shaun, they'd made it seem like Templars undercover with the Brotherhood had rescued Olivier and delivered him to his bosses before disappearing into the night. Apparently it was all very dramatic.

Desmond doesn't spend much of Friday in the Animus, instead spending his time getting the local gossip on Olivier's return from his fellow employees. Unsurprisingly, no one knows anything. The most common rumor he hears is that Olivier had a breakdown, took an unscheduled vacation, and forgot to tell anyone. It might even be the official-unofficial Abstergo cover story. The official story appears to be that "nothing happened and why aren't you working?"

He sneaks into the security offices at lunch and watches the archived footage from Melanie's and Olivier's offices, but she hasn't said anything to Olivier yet that's not excited babbling about him being back. Desmond hopes that if she's on his side, she's smart enough to hold it all in until she can get Olivier somewhere quiet. Desmond hopes that if she's not on his side, she fucks up trying to kill Olivier.

Worst-case scenarios are kind of his thing, now. He blames his over-exposure to Shaun for many things, including this one.

—-

Melanie doesn't approach Olivier or Desmond for the rest of Friday. Saturday, however, Olivier reports that she asked him out for lunch, superficially to talk about where they're at with the Pirates experience and get Olivier back up to speed with everything on the Sample 17 project.

Becca and Shaun tag along to spy, Shaun as a waiter and Becca as the bartender. Desmond has to stay at the warehouse, since Melanie knows him too well for him to go unnoticed at the restaurant. And because Becca's Baby needs baby-sitting now more than ever.

When they get back, they report that while she didn't say anything incriminating, she alluded heavily to Alvin's background and seemed to be digging for details.

"Actually, I think she might be trying to hit on you," Shaun admits grudgingly.

Becca just rolls her eyes. "Says the jealous rage monster. No, I don't think so," she reassures Desmond, ignoring Shaun's huffy muttering. "I get the vibe that she's not comfortable with whatever she knows Abstergo did to you. We don't know if she knows everything, but we think she's on the right track."

Desmond relaxes. "Good enough for me."

"She's going to molest you while you're in the Animus," Shaun complains.

"So why don't you watch the security footage while I'm at work, and maybe get Becca to do a workaround for their Animi so you can wake me up remotely if anything happens?" Desmond asks. "Fuck, I know I'd feel a lot more comfortable going under there if I had someone I trusted watching out for me."

"Consider it done," Becca assures him, turning immediately to her console. "Shaun, can you give me a hand getting into their systems?"

Shaun looks as relieved as Desmond feels, and starts helping Becca without even a single snarky comment. The lack of snark from Shaun reassures Desmond that he isn't the only one uncomfortable with the inherent vulnerability of his undercover assignment, but it also reinforces his reluctance to go under at work before they find out more about Melanie's loyalties.

—-

The next day at work, he's jerked abruptly out of the memory he's in. His body thrums with adrenalin, and he shoots up out of his chair.

"Calm down, just making sure it works," Becca's voice says in his ear. "Nothing's wrong, promise."

"Sit down before you scare your co-workers," Shaun adds. Desmond looks up at the security camera pointed at his cubicle. "Yes, I called in sick to the hell kiosk. I long for the day we no longer need that secondary in. Your safety is more important."

Desmond surreptitiously flashes the ASL sign for "I love you" at the security camera, smirking.

"No, because you're the bloody second coming—get back to work, you wanker," Shaun grumbles.

Desmond takes a moment to turn all the action figures in his cubicle to face the wall. He swears he can feel them staring at him when he's under, and can only last about half the morning before turning them around each day, but someone always turns them around the right way sometime during the night. Probably the cleaners. They can fucking have them, if they like them so much.

He looks up from turning them to face the wall, and Melanie's in his cubicle. "Alvin, can I speak with you in my office?" she asks, eyeing his dolls strangely. Maybe it's her turning them back around?

"Yeah, sure," he agrees, following her to her office while Shaun swears in his ear. "Is something wrong?" he asks when she's closed the door.

She sits down at her computer and taps a few keys before answering. The light on the security camera blinks out, and he can hear the sound of the doors hermetically sealing. Shaun's swearing over the comm gets louder and more inventive.

"No, seriously, what's the matter?" he asks Melanie nervously.

"Come over here and watch the revised trailer with me on the big screen," she says, gesturing to the wall behind her. A sudden rush of adrenaline makes his heart kick, but he walks over to stand beside her and they face the wall while the extended trailer cues up. "They can't see or hear us, or read our lips right now," she murmurs, lips barely moving as she stares blankly at the pirates on the screen.

"Okay?" Desmond isn't quite sure if he should be looking for a weapon and a way out or try to relax and slow down his heart rate before he has a heart attack.

"I've never thought what our parent company did to you was right, even if you were a dangerous and mentally unstable criminal. I know you don't know what I'm talking about," she pauses, and Desmond struggles for something to say. "Fuck," she continues, and it's hearing confident, bubbly Melanie swearing and sounding so confused that makes him look over at her. She's obviously torn about something: biting at her bottom lip, ruining her normally immaculate lipstick, brows drawing in close and wrinkling her forehead. She's conflicted.

Desmond makes his choice. He's pretty sure it's the right one.

"I know more than you'd think," he says gently. When she startles and leans away from him, he turns his hands so she can see his empty palms—and wrists. "I'm not an insane convict, I swear. I mean, the story sounds insane, but I'm one of the good guys—and I'm sorry, but you're working for the bad guys."

Her eyes flick over to meet his, and she looks uncertain.

"Talk to Olivier. He knows what's going on, and I swear, he's one of the good guys too. You know he won't bullshit you," he reassures her as the trailer ends. They stay frozen in front of the blank screen for a moment, but Melanie breaks the tension between them, gesturing for him to go back to where he'd been when she shut off the camera. He does, moving slowly, trying not to spook her.

"I'll talk to Olivier," she says quietly, turning the camera back on. "Maybe you should take the rest of the day off," she continues brightly. "You've done a lot of good work for us in a really short time—think of it as a reward!"

He smiles and waves and books it out of there, stopping only to hit the power button on his workstation.

—-

"Melanie's in," Olivier tells Desmond, Shaun, and Becca over a secure comm connection. "I've told her enough that she knows what's going on, and she's definitely in. Terrified, but in."

"So you think you can do it? Just the two of you, take over the Entertainment division?" Becca asks, excited.

"It will take a while, but we are going to start by editing the Pirates experience to include hints of the Templar/Assassin feud, and make it obvious which side is the correct one," Olivier says smugly. "It should get by the censors with no problem, but be a kind of subliminal message for its viewers, getting them ready to defend themselves against the more blatant Templar indoctrination that comes later in the footage."

"Brilliant," Shaun mimes a golf clap for Desmond.

"Subliminal messaging sounds kinda sketchy," Desmond argues doubtfully.

" _C'est bien, mon ami_ ," Olivier reassures him. "We're just giving our audience the tools to think for themselves. There is no brainwashing here, not from us, _n'est-ce pas_?"

"All right, then. I guess you've got our approval, if that matters," Desmond concedes.

"It matters much, _mon ami_ ," Olivier says. "Bill may be the head of our Brotherhood, but you are our heart, _tu comprende_? You are where we find our— _Comment dit-on_? _Tu est où vit notre moralité_."

"Um, good?" Desmond doesn't know what to say. Alvin knew enough French for Desmond to get the gist, though. Being the heart, the moral compass, of the entire Brotherhood is a heavy load to bear—but he guesses it's better than that weight being on his dad's shoulders. Dad's... more of an "end justifies the means" kind of guy.

Desmond's proved before, with Minerva and Juno and the cave and the device, that he can't justify doing something he knows will hurt innocent people, even if the outcome of not doing so makes things harder in the long run.

So maybe the Brotherhood looking to him for moral guidance will be a good thing.


	4. BEATING JUNO AT HER OWN GAME, AND ALSO RESOLVING THE FUCKING SAGE THING (WITH HELP FROM MINERVA)

Shaun's just minding his own business—actually, he's minding Desmond's business rather enthusiastically—when Desmond suddenly freezes and pulls abruptly away from Shaun. They're in the warehouse, perched precariously on the Animus couch, having been making enthusiastically sure the skull doesn't wander off. Shaun loses his balance without Desmond's helping hands, and lands on the floor rather ingloriously.

"What?" Shaun blurts eloquently, stunned by the sudden shock of the cold cement on his bare ass. Desmond's yanking his clothes back on in something of a hurry.

"Pants! Pants, put your fucking pants on," he hisses at Shaun, voice tight, and chucks said trousers at Shaun's head.

Desmond's urgency is apparently infectious, so Shaun pulls his trousers on before making any sharp comments about how Desmond had been saying exactly the opposite about Shaun's trousers not five minutes ago.

He's glad of it when he twists to see whatever's behind Shaun that Desmond's rather insistently avoiding looking at—Minerva standing there in all her holographic glory. She has a tiny, amused smile on her lips. He does up his flies quicker than he previously thought possible, glad they'd been in too much of a hurry to take off anything more than absolutely necessary.

"Why are you here? I thought you gave up when I did what Juno wanted me to," Desmond asks the hologram.

Shaun grabs the comm he'd taken out earlier to prevent another comic incident of "accidental" voyeurism for Becs, and tells her to get her arse back to the warehouse, ignoring her insinuations about him angling for a threesome. Shaun just says succinctly, "Minerva's here," and mutes her cursing to pay attention to what Minerva's saying, wishing he'd put more effort into figuring out how to record holograms in a way that didn't result in only blurs of light and screechy feedback.

"...won that battle, not the war," Minerva's saying, her voice echoing oddly in the warehouse. "There was a small chance that it would have been her deciding stroke, but I'm glad to see the probabilities were once again not in her favor."

"You said Desmond would die," Shaun waved emphatically at Desmond. "Not dead!"

"But he did," Minerva's holographic brows might furrow slightly, but it's hard to tell for sure, what with an alien's expressions in a beam of light. "She wiped away all that he was, so that the cipher left would be her perfect vessel."

"His body was alive!" Shaun insists.

"If the body were all that mattered, we would still live on this planet," Minerva says tonelessly. Her eyes flick over to focus on Desmond, and Shaun feels certain that she isn't going to respond to anything more Shaun has to say.

"So, what, your bodies are still around here somewhere?" Desmond asks, surprised. Shaun hadn't made that leap himself, but he can see how Desmond can infer that that's what she meant.

Minerva doesn't answer Desmond's question. She's beginning to look a little exasperated with them, if Shaun's reading her expression correctly. "Until the mainframe in which the majority of Juno's self is still located is wiped from the face of the planet, she will continue her fight to live again in flesh. It is, and will be, a never-ending struggle for the current denizens of this planet against the civilization that came before, we who created you. You must take pains to keep secret her location, for there are those who value knowledge too greatly to have care for the greater ramifications of their actions."

"Like the sage?" Desmond says wryly.

"I wouldn't say it's knowledge he values so much, as something a little more carnal," Shaun smirks.

"Wait. But getting rid of Juno isn't going to stop the next incarnation of the sage. From what I saw in Edward's memories, he's been getting progressively more batshit with each incarnation, and this most recent one was pretty fucking crazy," Desmond points out.

"The reincarnation of her beloved is orchestrated by Juno's mainframe, and the deterioration of her constructed body over the eons has indeed appeared to have some effect on the sanity of his self," Minerva agrees. "But while it is difficult to comprehend for a less advanced civilization, you may think of Juno's mainframe acting, for her beloved, as something like a remote version of your Animi. Without the mainframe, or perhaps a uniquely calibrated version of one of your Animi, if the genetics of his bloodline chance to combine and bring him once again to live on the surface of this planet—something far less likely to occur without Juno's subtle machinations—the next incarnation would be incapable of accessing the genetic memories of his past lives that will be encoded in his DNA." Minerva pauses for a moment.

"The feud between the Templars and the Assassins did not originate with Juno, but she has exacerbated and taken advantage of it throughout history. It is possible that without her influence, the two orders may reach a civil accord, if not a truce. Your goals are not dissimilar, for all their differing methods may seem abhorrent to you," she adds, almost as if she thinks it's the cherry on top of her pretty please sundae.

"Why are you back, and telling us all of this now? Why didn't you say any of this the first time around?" Desmond asks. He sounds almost angry, and when Shaun glances over at him, Desmond's hands are clenched into white-knuckled fists, and he's trembling. Shaun steps over to stand beside him, and rests a hand on his shoulder.

Shaun also wants to know why she put them all through this, when she could have just given them a little hope at the beginning, and struggles to keep his mouth shut.

"Your story was not yet finished," she says simply and incomprehensibly.

"I thought this was the ultimate be-all, end-all of your existence," Shaun accuses her. "Little lazy of you to just let things play out, isn't it?"

She turns to glare at Shaun, the first time she's looked at him since she began ignoring him earlier. "I would like to see our creations prosper long after we have become extinct, this is true. However, the be-all, end-all of my existence, as you put it so quaintly, are my loved ones, who will die with the rest of us when the cataclysm comes for us in two years' time. Your species will have many more millennia of existence, even if it is a difficult and painful existence, no matter how Juno's machinations play out. My civilization will soon burn and leave nothing of us behind but refuse and scraps for the immature, childlike creations that will be our legacy to squabble over. Make you no mistake, I wish for your current civilization to prosper and evolve, but when I cast my gaze wider and let it encompass your planet, I wonder if Juno doesn't have the right of it and that you are nothing but children who need to be shown a firm hand before you may mature into the adults you have the potential to be."

Minerva seems to be done with her little self-righteous speech, but Shaun and Desmond give her a brief moment of silence, just in case she wants to add another little something more.

"So, basically, we blow up Connor's cave down in New York, and not only is Juno gone forever, but we never have to worry about the sage being reborn again?" Desmond asks, ignoring Minerva's diatribe. If Shaun didn't know better, he would interpret the look Minerva's giving Desmond as rolling her eyes.

"Blowing shite up seems to solve a remarkable number of our problems," Shaun agrees. Minerva's hologram winks out—a little huffily, if Shaun says so.

Becs comes skidding into the warehouse, dressed to the nines. They don't ask where the van is, why she's turned out so nicely, or why she was running. Shaun can't bring himself to care.

"What'd I miss?" Becs asks breathlessly.

"Victory," Shaun announces smugly.

"I love blowing shit up," Desmond adds happily.

"Too bad it doesn't work with in-laws," Shaun mutters, wondering just how, exactly, he's going to explain the necessity of blowing up yet another First Civilization outpost to Bill.

 

 

**THE END (OR IS IT?)**


End file.
